


A Hearth Is Not a Home

by rolerei



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Everybody Lives, Gen, Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV (2016)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-15
Updated: 2019-10-15
Packaged: 2020-12-12 04:56:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20986946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rolerei/pseuds/rolerei
Summary: In the unforgiving night, Crowe struggles for survival so she can return to the only family that she's ever had.Written for Glaiveweek 2019's Day #2 prompt: Hope (Life // Love // Survival)





	A Hearth Is Not a Home

**Author's Note:**

> My first time experimenting with writing in the present tense. I have to say I quite like it - although it does require getting used to…
> 
> This fic was proofread by the wonderfully considerate [TeapotBandit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeapotBandit/pseuds/TeapotBandit) <3 and is loosely tied to [The Last Glaive](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20321962).

The night has never been friendly to a Glaive. When the sun sets and the night is closing in, it usually means wave after wave of daemons are going to be dropped onto the battlefield from the Imperial side. The last time it happened, when they fought by a fort town on the westernmost side of Cleigne, the Empire had sent in its latest creation - a hulking monstrosity that no Glaive could ever hope to defeat. Not even its half-self-proclaimed hero.

At the thought of Nyx, Crowe forces herself to run a little bit faster in the dark. She can feel her muscles scream and strain, and the gaping wounds on her shoulder and thigh demand to be treated. Nevertheless, she pushes on forward, one step after another.

She cannot die here, she thinks over and over again. Not in this wretched place.

Once every few steps, she tries to look back over her shoulder. Her pursuers seem to have given up the chase, which is probably quite a wise decision. The night has never been friendly to a Glaive, especially a wounded one - and she is running straight into it. Might as well let the roaming daemons finish the job.

The roaming daemons… shit.

A shriek can be heard from her left, and Crowe sidesteps just in time to avoid a short blade from slashing at her calf. Uttering a spell under her breath, she opens up her palm and releases a bolt of crackling lightning. It hits at a goblin-faced daemon square on its chest, sending it writhing back into a dark tunnel.

Crowe gasps at the sudden discovery. On a normal mission, she would not get close to such a dark crevice. Her extensive military training and experience scream at her that the place must be filled to the brim with daemons. No sane Glaive will dare to go there all alone.

Surely, that will also be the line of thinking of her pursuers. Which, in turn, makes the cave rather enticing to hide in.

So Crowe enters the cave, carefully and tentatively. Once she gets further in, she turns on the flashlight embedded on the chest of her coat. The goblin-faced daemon is no longer a threat, having dissolved into a soot-like mass of particles right in front of her now-illuminated field of view.

As she ventures deeper into the cave, Crowe is careful to examine every corner, making sure that no daemon is lurking in the shadows. However, her exhaustion forces her to stop after a while, and she settles by a stony nook by the wall. Her wounds and her entire body ache. She leaves the flashlight on, knowing that its presence deters the daemons from approaching. But she knows that it won't last for long.

Leaning her head against the hard rock behind her, Crowe works her brain into remembering how she got to this situation in the first place. She was on the way out of Cleigne to Tenebrae for an escort mission to bring the Oracle to Altissia. A black van with tinted windows approached her at an intersection. She tried to outrun the vehicle, but someone threw a lightning bolt at her motorbike, sending her rolling over the asphalt. The next time she opened her eyes, Luche's face was in her view, smirking and brandishing his curved dagger.

Luche… she should have known. He is always too logical and calculating, and much too confident and charismatic to never consider mutiny.

Crowe lets out a hiss - both at the remainder of her memory in Luche's captivity and the sharp pain that suddenly tugs at her wrist. She reaches to it automatically, feeling at the burns where the rope has cut into her skin. On the first day of captivity, she tried to escape the bindings with magic, but none of her spells seemed to work. Luche helpfully gloated that a device had been placed in the room that prevented her from using magic, completely failing to remember that the device prevented him from using magic as well.

So she bade her time, endured the pain, and planned her escape.

As she remembers the details of her escape, Crowe mutters a healing spell. It does help closing down the wounds on her wrists, but only slightly. Much of her energy was already wasted on her way out, blasting open steel doors and casting a fiery tornado that distracted all the guards from her one final jump to freedom. But then her memory morphs and changes, and before long she was back again in Insomnia. Healthy and safe and laughing at Libertus' bad puns, while Nyx was handing her a plate of skewers freshly roasted from Yamachang's kitchen.

Crowe senses tears begin to warm up her eyes. Those two idiots… she misses them so much. She is never the one who talks about her feelings out loud, but she is grateful everyday that the Astrals made her take the left turn which caused her to literally run into Nyx and Libertus so many years ago. Ever since then, they became a family that she never had. And even if she has never said it, she hopes that her love for them speaks loud enough.

If she survives this ordeal and makes it back to Insomnia, she will make a point of telling them.

With a renewed determination, Crowe stands back up to her feet and begins to gather pieces of wood that are strewn about the cave floor. She piles them up together by her nook and whispers a spell, causing a small flame to manifest. The magical flame floats slightly in the air, barely licking at the pile she managed to gather. With some luck, it should be able to last her until morning comes - a little hearth of her own to stave off the dangers of the night.

Finally finding it safe to turn off her flashlight, Crowe shifts around against the wall and floor of the cave to find a somewhat comfortable position. A rather big challenge, considering she is wounded and bruised in many parts of her body. Her few hisses are echoed by the rocky walls whenever she presses against a sore spot. But she finds a way, eventually, curling on her less sore side around the little makeshift hearth.

In front of her drooping eyes, the fire crackles. Following the phenomenon, a pair of eyes appears in a dark corner, glowing and silently watching. Crowe stares back at it, unblinking, until the eyes eventually disappear in the dark and the sound of scales slithering away can be heard - and she finally lets herself relax.

She will live. She will not die here. Not before she sees her family again, for one last time. Crowe tells this to herself over and over again like a lullaby.


End file.
